Canada’s 2015 federal election is days away and each party has released its platform. Let’s compare them from a photographer’s point of view.
The Obvious
• Green Party platform is 44 pages and 5.8 MB in file size.
• NDP brochure is 81 pages and 5.1 MB in size.
• Liberal Party platform is 88 pages and 10.6 MB.
• Conservative Party brochure is 159 pages and 37.4 MB.
That alone might be very telling.
A closer look
• The NDP front-cover photo has been nicely burned down. Who doesn’t love lots of empty black nothingness in a photo? Too bad the page design didn’t compensate for this.
Notice in the cover photo how the all the signs are unreadable. Compare this to the Conservative brochure photos where sign messages are very important.
The brochure uses only a handful of small pictures of its party leader. It looks like these pictures were added as an afterthought. Most pictures are too small to have any impact or to send any message.
The small, second-page portrait of the party leader is nicely done but the page design is not. The leader has been cut-and-pasted into a bottom page corner. Why did they add an odd, blurry drop shadow to one side of his head, so it wouldn’t look so cut-and-pasted? It looks like this picture was added to fill an empty space at the bottom of the page.
The French version (link to PDF) of the NDP brochure is identical to the English version.
• Who are the mystery woman and child on the Green Party cover? What do they have to do with anything? Why is the picture so over-exposed?
The Green Party uses pictures of its leader and some of its candidates but some of the brief photo captions are poorly done.
The Green Party brochure doesn’t use any stock pictures. Every picture is real but the photography is basic. Whether intentional or not, the look and feel of the photography is unsophisticated, unpolished and somewhat amateurish but yet down to earth. The photo editing is very uneven.
There’s a mix of horizontal and vertical pictures and even full-page pictures, all of which add interest to the design.
The Green Party photography shows almost no political signage.
The French version (link to PDF) of this brochure is similar to the English version but has a couple of nicer pictures and more photos of the leader.
• The Liberal Party platform has a very bizarre front-cover photo. The cover shows only backs of heads and the back of the party leader who’s standing way off in the distance. Everyone has their back turned to you.
I guess the message is that you, the viewer, are on the outside looking in and that you’re not important because everyone, including the party leader, is ignoring you. This photo has no human interest and no point of attention. There’s nothing worth looking at.
If you like triangular pictures then you’ll love this Liberal brochure. It makes frequent use of the always popular triangular crop.
Throughout the brochure, the party leader doesn’t make any eye contact with the viewer. The leader is completely ignoring you. There’s no attempt to build a connection or earn trust.
Several of the photos used are, uh, unusual choices with, uh, unusual editing. I never knew that Canada’s west coast horizon was crooked, that the Peace Tower in Ottawa tilted one way while the House of Commons tilted the other way, or that some buildings leaned to the left. The chapter title pages also have a crooked graphic element but maybe that was intentional?
The brochure uses a few cheap stock pictures.
Unlike the Conservative Party brochure, the Liberal pictures contain no political signage.
The French version (link to PDF) is longer than the English version but is identical in terms of photography.
• The Conservative Party platform uses lots of pictures of its leader but many have had distracting props added. Instead of blending into the visual story, these props stick out like the proverbial sore thumb: Canadian flags in the background, party signage, the party leader wearing one of his many “CAN ADA” jackets. It’s not subtle at all.
The constant signage and props “talk down” to the reader. It’s like adding an applause sign to a live TV show so the studio audience will know when to clap.
The Conservative Party loves signage. While signs makes for a fast read, it shows the Conservatives think that readers need to be told what to think. You can send a message by showing and/or by telling. Showing is the most effective and it involves action and emotion. The Conservatives like to tell.
Unlike the other parties’ brochures, the Conservative leader is usually shown front and centre. The message is that he’s important. But the photography is repetitive. It’s as if the party thinks the reader isn’t smart enough to get it the first time. Do you really need 16 pictures of the guy giving a speech? Twelve pictures of him shaking hands? Seven photos of him posing with an unidentified group of people?
Many pictures are the usual contrived, campaign-style photo. There’s no real moment or emotion. There’s no intentional eye contact with the viewer. The Conservative leader often looks somewhat out of place.
The brochure uses only one cheap stock picture.
The Conservative brochure has the most photos and many have the exact same horizontal crop (and a few of these pictures are brutally cropped). Yes, it means the pictures fit the page template but it’s boring and simplistic.
I couldn’t find the French version of the Conservative platform brochure.
Conclusions
It’s good to see that the parties used very few stock pictures. But it’s unfortunate that none of the political parties take photography and photo editing seriously.
• In the NDP and Green Party brochures, the message seems to be that party leader isn’t too important. The leader isn’t shown doing much of anything. Maybe that’s intentional.
The Liberal Party leader is somewhat important since he’s shown in many pictures. But he’s often in the background, off to the side, or partially hidden. There’s no real message about the leader other than he exists. He never makes eye contact with the viewer.
The Conservative photography is better done and more effective at sending a message than the other three parties. There’s a variety of camera angles and focal lengths, and it’s obvious that more thought went into the pictures. The Conservative leader looks more important, more like a leader. Unfortunately it’s a boring, dry, almost clinical look, with no attempt to connect with the viewer.
• Neither the Liberals nor Conservatives used a posed portrait of their leader. Remember when this was the norm for politicians? Every company in the world uses a business portrait of its CEO or president in its annual report. What do they know that some political parties don’t?
• The NDP and Green Party did not use the Canadian flag in any photo. The Liberals used the flag twice and the flag also appeared incidentally and very small in the background of two other photos. The Conservatives used a Canadian flag in its photos about 12 times and the flag also appeared incidentally in the background of three other photos
• The Green Party has the most “homey” brochure. This is what your child would produce for a school project.
• The NDP brochure is what a group of insurance agents would design for a presentation. There’s clip art, bar graphs and pie charts. A few pictures were thrown in later because someone said you should add some photos.
• The Liberal platform is the brochure you’d produce if you knew only a little bit about graphic design and photography but wanted to show that you knew a lot. You’d use triangular photos and crooked things because it would show that you’re creative.
• The Conservative brochure is what a large corporation would produce when trying to look like a small, friendly business-next-door. It’s polished, well packaged and seems to hit all the right notes. But yet it still misses. It misses because it’s too business-like and too cold. It goes through the motions without going through any emotions.
But…
Why didn’t any party hire a real photo editor?
Why didn’t any party try to make their leader look more human, more real, someone the average Canadian could identify with? Maybe that’s not possible?
Why not show that the politician does more than give speeches, shake hands and pose for grip-and-grins?
Why not try to be more than a political slogan or a campaign commercial?
Why not try something different?
